The Deebes Legacy
by Akktri
Summary: The son of Jack Deebes discovers his father's secret.


As I stood in the cemetery, dressed in my tuxedo, staring down at my father's tombstone, the first thing that came to my mind was that we were only burying a symbol, for closure.

There was no body. No remains. Hence no coffin. No urn.

Just a marble headstone with the epitaph, "THAT'S ALL FOLKS."

Dad wanted one of his crazy cartoons etched into it, but he didn't have the money.

It was a nice funeral, but I felt no more closure than I did before we arbitrarily declared him dead. I still thought he might be hiding out in Japan with all those Anime types.

If you've read anything at all about me in the Nevada papers, you'll believe me when I say I never knew my father.

I was still an embryo in my mother's womb when dad killed Mr. Glenwood in a fit of jealous rage.

Mom was Mrs. Deebes back then, but dad was "too busy with his damn cartoons to pay attention to her," so she started sneaking out with a gynecologist she met at the health club.

When dad caught them sleeping together, he shot him.

I heard the guy pulled a knife or something, but the guy was naked and clearly in the middle of something, so I'm not sure how they brought it down from murder one to manslaughter.

His bedroom.

His dresser.

His gun.

He clearly had the home team advantage.

I often wonder what it would have been like if he'd premeditated a bit further, maybe stayed off the police radar enough to be a real father to me. At least, for awhile.

While he was serving time in a federal penitentiary, mom was busy getting sonograms and throwing up.

Thanks to the divorce settlement, and a part time job at a doctor's office (not the gynecologist, of course), she got cared for well enough. Even though dad couldn't do that much from prison, he had a successful comic book franchise going, and that's what he used to pay for alimony, and later his bail.

From what I heard, Jack Deebes was a model prisoner. His good behavior earned him a cell to himself, and access to a drawing table and art supplies that most inmates are forbidden access to.

He also got out of prison early. Good behavior.

I don't remember a lot about the incidents immediately following his release. The papers said that some terrorist released a million gallons of lysergic acid into the Las Vegas water supply.

I guess there might be something to that, the way dozens of people are still reporting strange flashbacks and weird delusions about being animated cartoons, but that answer never completely satisfied me.

I think I was about three or four when it happened.

To this day, I swear I remember suddenly becoming a mouse with unnaturally illuminated paws, the color of Bugs Bunny's butt.

I remember laying in my crib, staring at my fingers until a pink cartoon elephant dressed like mom saw me and shrieked in pachyderm fashion.

Whenever I tell mom about it, she just tells me I'm making things up.

Maybe she's right. Or maybe I did ingest some of that acid when I was little.

No one knows what happened to my dad after he was sighted at that hotel.

One witness swears my dad turned his hands into animated ones and climbed to the top of the building, but everyone says the witness was high.

I guess we all were.

What he was doing up there, I have no idea.

Someone said he was fighting a woman, or a man, or escaping from the cops.

Some say he is the one who put the LSD in our water supply, and the cops were hunting him down.

Some say he got pulled in by that big black cloud everyone seemed to hallucinate.

Mom said he just shared a room with a strange whore/singer from the hotel.

Seems plausible enough. After all, witnesses at the epicenter of the whole mess claim that a woman in a tight skirt enthralled casino goers by seducing a lounge singer with a thoroughly suggestive performance of Sinatra's _Let's Make Love_ just moments before transforming into a cartoon clown.

It could have been the same woman, according to the reports, drug influenced as some of them might be.

When alimony stopped, and his taxes went unpaid for so long, the FBI went on a manhunt, but they didn't find anything.

From what mom heard from one of the officers, he was seen a comic book shop, purchasing his own books.

Twice he was spotted by neighbors going out of his house, once with a strange blonde woman, once with a square jawed gentleman in a raggedy period costume.

He visited briefly with one of the neighbors, a younger redhead girl named Sharon, from whom he borrowed transportation. Mom thinks he drove her to the hotel in question and slept with her, but none of the witnesses spotted her in the hotel proper.

My mother thinks she put on a wig, but from the reports, the blonde seems to be several inches taller, and at least a decade older.

The weirdest thing about the Cool World comic book series is that it kept going, even after my father's disappearance.

The FBI and the IRS have both investigated the matter as far as they possibly could, but nothing added up.

The publisher claims that the packages just started showing up at his door.

Upon searching, the police found no return addresses on the shipments, no customs forms, no distinct clues as to their origin.

All done in my father's style.

Although suspicious, they were not considered substantial proof that my father was alive. The packages alone meant nothing. Someone could be doing forgeries. They even insinuated that I did them, though I have no idea why I would invent a character like Amanda Bunny.

Amanda was weird. A cartoon in one panel, a hyperrealistic person in the next. I couldn't even follow what was going on with her half the time. But there was something about her curves, those hips, the way her body was shaped...I just couldn't stop staring.

One time the police sat me down and tried to make me draw Amanda. I failed miserably.

I draw with my left hand. I can't make more than a stick figure, yet they were unconvinced by my absolute lack of skill. They accused me of holding out.

I even met with a police psychologist. You know, just to make absolutely certain Sybill wasn't drawing those pictures while Sane Derek pretended to fail art class.

Math. Science. Gym. That's what I score high on at my school. I planned to go into med school once I finished senior high.

All that changed when they gave me the keys to the Deebe's Estate, that itty bitty piece of shit house two miles south of the Vegas strip.

It seemed my acid induced nighmares were only beginning.


End file.
